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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24616507">i hope it's already too late</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Memelock/pseuds/Memelock'>Memelock</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>the world's latest sylvain and felix week project [9]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Explicit Sexual Content, M/M, takes place on the crimson flower route but from the faerghus side of things, this is sad y'all sorry</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-06-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-06-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 09:54:56</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>12,667</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24616507</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Memelock/pseuds/Memelock</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>four firsts. one last.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Felix Hugo Fraldarius/Sylvain Jose Gautier</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>the world's latest sylvain and felix week project [9]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1747060</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>48</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>i hope it's already too late</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>there is no plot whatsoever to this, i just wanted to write some really long intimacy stuff and then something sad. this takes place on the crimson flower route. :( this is for day six (in addition to another one i did because i couldn’t decide lol) — i picked the “firsts” theme. title is from “no children” by the mountain goats.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">Sylvain is Felix’s first kiss, and Felix is Sylvain’s, when he is nine, almost ten, and Felix is seven. It’s a familiar scene, Felix sitting flush against Sylvain’s side, face buried wetly in his shirt, crying over unbearable losses to both Glenn and Dimitri in the training grounds. Sylvain is patting his shoulder, trying to be soothing in his boyish way — the goddess knows no one else has the patience for Felix’s emotions these days. Even Glenn usually just chuckles at him, good-natured but unsympathetic.</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">“Hey, it’s okay, Felix,” he says for about the tenth time. The younger boy isn’t bawling anymore, but his tears still fall steadily.</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">“I know it is,” he replies, voice small and shaky. “I’m sorry.”</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">“What for?” Sylvain asks, wondering if keeping him talking might do more toward calming him down. “You don’t have to be sorry.”</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">“For crying so much,” Felix says. “I know it’s annoying. My dad hates it. He thinks I’m weak.”</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">“You’re not weak! At least I hope not,” Sylvain laughs. “Considering how often you beat me when we spar that would make me pretty pathetic.”</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">“You’re not,” Felix insists.</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">“Then neither are you,” Sylvain says, chucking him under the chin with the hand not wrapped around his shoulders. As he’d suspected, his tears were coming a little more slowly already, between hiccups. “Dimitri is just crazy strong because of that Crest. And Glenn is way older than us, like a real knight almost. You’ll beat them someday.” Glenn is in fact only two years older than Sylvain but for Felix it’s a gap of half a lifetime, so there’s no point in splitting hairs.</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">“I will!” Felix exclaims, clenching a fist in Sylvain’s shirt.</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">“That’s the spirit.” Sylvain grins at him. “Feeling better?”</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">Felix nods. “Thanks, Sylvain. You’re always really nice to me. And you don’t make fun of me for crying.”</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">“I would never dream of making fun of you for that,” Sylvain says, all childish assurance. “It’s probably good that you cry, so it’s easy for me to tell when you’re upset and I can help you.”</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">“You’re really good at making me calm down,” Felix sniffles, and Sylvain thinks, for the first time ever, that it’s cute. Like something one of the kittens Felix loves to pet in the cobbled streets of Itha might do. “Thanks again, Sylvain.”</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">“Really, you don’t have to thank me. I like being your friend. And I like helping you.”</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">Felix looks up at him, earnestness in his amber eyes. “Can I give you a kiss?”</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">“Huh? Sure,” Sylvain replies, offering the cheek where his friend has planted dozens of kisses, when he defeats Ingrid in a spar or when Sylvain brings him a spicy meat pie from the kitchen or when he’s just happy after Glenn reads them his favorite story. But Felix shakes his head.</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">“On the lips,” he says. “Sometimes my dad does that to my mom when she does something that makes him happy. So I should do that for you.”</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">“Isn’t that something only grown-ups do?” Sylvain asks, wrinkling his nose. “Like after you’re married.”</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">“Nuh uh,” Felix argues. “Glenn and Ingrid will do it someday.”</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">“Yeah, when they’re <em>married</em>,” Sylvain replies, emphasizing the word.</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">“They could do it before then!” Felix retorts, and his lip is starting to tremble again and Sylvain realizes that it doesn’t matter when or where kissing usually happens, it doesn’t matter who’s right, it just matters that Felix stays happy and safe and his friend.</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">“Okay, Felix, you’re right. Give me a kiss then.” And he tries to imitate the few times he’s seen a kiss, closing his eyes and puckering his lips, trying not to think about how he probably looks like a clown.</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">He feels Felix peel away from his side a little, hands on his shoulders to pull himself up to Sylvain’s height and Sylvain leans down a little to make it easier. Their faces knock against each other, both sets of eyes apparently closed, and Sylvain’s mouth hits what he thinks is Felix’s nose. He cracks his lids to a slit, squinting at Felix, who has his own eyes screwed tightly shut and his lips clamped into a line like a soldier. Sylvain takes his face in his hands to hold it still, resumes puckering, and puts his lips against Felix’s.</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">Felix’s lips are still wet, probably from crying, and he tries not to think about how potentially gross that is considering how much snot was dripping out of his nose. Sylvain holds them there for a brief moment, both of them perfectly still, then pulls back.</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">“Thank you for always being nice to me,” Felix huffs out all in one breath, and then his eyes split open. “I’m never doing that again.”</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">“Me neither. Unless you learn how to kiss better.”</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">“Do you think there’s a way to be better at it?” Felix asks, wonderingly, eyes on the middle distance toward adult mysteries.</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">“Probably, or no one would do it, right?”</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">“I guess you’re right,” Felix says, and as if to underscore the experience as a whole he swipes the back of his hand across his mouth, wiping the kiss away.</span>
</p>
<hr/>
<p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Sylvain is Ingrid’s first kiss when he is thirteen and she is eleven. They’re alone together in the woods of the Fraldarius estate, where all of them are visiting because it’s almost St. Seiros’ Day and Fraldarius is where Dimitri insisted on being, and so that is where the other children of Faerghus gather. Glenn and Felix are sparring with the prince somewhere. Miklan hadn’t been interested in the visit, surprising Sylvain the least out of anyone. </span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">In fact, he’s much more surprised that Ingrid hasn’t wanted to stick with Glenn, like glue to his side the way she’s been as often as possible ever since they started to understand together the engagement they’ve been entangled in since they were children, the connection that stretched from their past to the present. Instead, she’d asked to tag along when he said he was going for a walk. This was a bad turn of events for Sylvain, who had to put his plans of sneaking off to go into town and find some girls to talk to on hold. He couldn’t turn Ingrid down without being suspicious, so he’d agreed to let her come along.</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">They’re walking slowly, side by side among the trees. Ingrid looks lost in thought so Sylvain keeps his instincts to fill the silence under lock and key for the moment. The right instant to break the calm between them would come eventually, he’s sure of it. And it does — he just hadn’t expected Ingrid to be the one to do it. </span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">“Sylvain,” she says, a hint of uncertainty in her voice, “have you ever been in love?”</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">“You mean besides your grandma?” he teases, earning himself a shove that’s only a little playful. “Nah, I don’t think so. That seems like something way off in the future.” He pauses for a moment, trying to feel the situation out, sensing something inside Ingrid like a tiger in a trap. “Why do you ask?”</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">She shrugs, a little too studied to come across as noncommittal. “I just… wonder how it feels.”</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">Sylvain nods. “Me too. I have had a crush before, I can tell you how that feels.”</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">“Okay.” Their steps are slowed almost to the point of standing still.</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">“It’s like… when you look at them, you feel warm and weird on the inside. Like there’s a snake in your stomach. And you want to be around them but you’re also kind of scared to be. Not like the way I’m scared to be around you because you’re always yelling at me,” he adds, winking at Ingrid, but she doesn’t respond — no laughter but also no retaliation. “Oh, and you think about kissing them. A lot.”</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">Ingrid is silent for a few moments. “You’ve kissed before, right Sylvain?”</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">He scoffs, throwing his hands behind his head. “Duh. Lots of times.” Maybe not so many times, not yet, but Ingrid doesn’t really need to know the details. He’s done it enough to give advice. “Have you and Glenn…?”</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">She shakes her head ferociously. “Not yet. Maybe not ever.” She sighs then, in a way that is odd for Ingrid. Usually when she sighs it’s in disappointment or resignation at Felix and Sylvain’s antics, but this feels more like wistfulness. “I won’t even know what I’m doing. He’ll probably laugh at me. And…” But she stops, biting off her words at the root before she can go on.</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">“I’ll help you if you want,” Sylvain offers, trying very hard not to pitch his voice into flirtation, fighting his instincts. This is Ingrid. She’ll never respond positively to that. She’s a friend, a friend who needs help whether she’ll admit it or not.</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">A friend who is looking at him as if he’s grown a second head. They’ve stopped walking now, still under the trees. Somewhere a bird is singing. “What?”</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">“I’ll help you. You know, practice.” One hand to the back of his neck this time, rubbing it against the sting of awkwardness. “Like I said, I’ve done it before.”</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">Ingrid considers him for a moment, sizing him up, scrutinizing him. “All right. Kiss me.”</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">“Just like that?” he asks, flustered somehow even though this is his idea.</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">“Well, just do it how you normally would, then,” she says, matter-of-factly, as if she’s asking for the simplest thing in the world. And really, what could be simpler than kissing a cute girl like Ingrid? Right?</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">Sylvain sighs. “You’re not very romantic,” he says, but he steps closer to her all the same. “Don’t be nervous, and tell me if there’s anything you don’t like. We can stop or do things different whenever you want.” She nods, looking at him with steel behind her eyes. Not the way he usually likes girls to look at him in this type of situation but it will have to do.</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">He takes her by the hand, lifting her arm to wrap over his shoulder, then takes her other arm to mirror it. He places his own hands on her cheeks, and her skin is cool in the winter air under his fingers. She’s still staring at him. “Close your eyes,” he murmurs, close enough for his breath to hit her face, and she does. He follows suit, bringing his face down to meet hers so he doesn’t have to coordinate getting her on tiptoe. Their lips touch, hers soft and unexpectedly warm against his considering how chilly her cheeks were. He presses himself against Ingrid a little closer, surprising himself, and she doesn’t move away for a moment before they separate.</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">Sylvain feels no unhappy curl of a snake in his stomach as his eyes blow open, looking right into Ingrid’s where they’re fixed on his face, and he’s surprised to find that they’re shining with tears. “That bad, huh?” he tries to joke, hands dropping to rest on her arms, stabilizing as she shakes her head and chuckles. </span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">“Sylvain,” she says, and her voice is quaking hard, it quakes him in turn. “I… I think I like girls. I’ve tried so hard with Glenn, to feel about him like you were saying earlier. I like him but I…”</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">His mind reels for a minute, taking in Ingrid’s words, happy she felt she could trust him, reveling in a new layer of commonality between them, scared for her and the future her family expects from her. “Ingrid…”</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">“You don’t have to say anything,” she says, voice small, tears crawling down her cheeks. He rubs her arms where he’s holding her, as if he could smooth away the tornado that must be rolling inside her.</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">“I want to. I like girls too, you know,” he says, winking, but she doesn’t laugh this time. “And… guys.”</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">Her eyes flash wide at that, her hands still on his shoulders gripping tight now. “Really?”</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">He nods. “I’m really happy you told me, Ingrid. And I’m sorry too. About Glenn and everything. And for kissing you. That must have sucked.”</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">“It helped,” she says, and then she pulls him into a hug, the fierce kind that only Ingrid can give. Sylvain puts his arms around her, like he has a million times before, warmth and a strange feeling of something out of place coexisting inside him in a way he isn’t sure he’s ready to even try to understand.</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">When they pull back from each other, Ingrid isn’t crying anymore. In fact, she’s even smiling.</span>
</p>
<hr/>
<p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Somehow, Sylvain is Dimitri’s first kiss when he is twenty and the crown prince is eighteen. If he has to guess he’d say what he knew: Dimitri’s childhood had been one that had been watched carefully, knowing the value of him and his bloodline. Sylvain’s parents had been the same way, in their own way, they just hadn’t cared enough to step in unless he did something to embarrass them.</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">It’s a cold night in the Ethereal Moon, the night of the Garreg Mach Ball. Sylvain had spent most of the night dancing, switching between anyone who would give him the time and Mercedes or Annette, the only other people in the Blue Lions who seemed as excited and happy in the setting, under the candlelight, as he did. He’d been hoping to take the girl he’s kissing in the alcove back to his room, but even as she giggles under his deft fingers and soft lips she’s pulling away. His dorm is just at the end of the hallway, steps from both of them, but it feels like miles as she puts her hands flat against his chest, playful but with intention.</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">He grins against her lips. “Too much for you, baby?”</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">She laughs, and he backs away. “You’re always too much. That’s what my friends say.”</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">“Slander.” In her ear now, voice low, and she trembles against him for a moment before pulling fully out of his reach.</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">“It’s not slander if it’s true,” she protests, waggling her fingers at him. “Good night, Sylvain.”</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">He sighs theatrically, already wondering what his backup plan will be as he waves back. She disappears down the hall and vanishes, off to her own room or maybe to someone else’s somewhere in the night. The ball is probably winding down on the first floor of the monastery, no point in going back. Anyone willing to leave with someone else had surely already left, off to the gazebo or the stables or any of the myriad other places Sylvain had taken one of a million nameless faces and undone them little by little. He wonders if Mercedes has ended up alone — she has higher standards than he can meet, most likely, but she might be persuaded. </span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">At that thought, somehow, the energy leaves him. He doesn’t want to do any more persuading, nor be persuaded, not tonight. So… his bed and his own warm hand. It could be worse. He sighs again, no audience this time, and turns down the hallway toward his room, hands shoved into his pockets.</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">“Does it help?”</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">Sylvain stops and reverses, surprised to recognize Dimitri’s voice from just a few feet behind him in the hall, surprised not least of all that the prince is still out at this hour. “You’ve never been one for parties,” he says, winking, and indeed Dimitri’s face looks tired. Tired, and maybe something else.</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">“Claude insisted that the house leads remain to encourage morale,” he sighs, stepping closer to Sylvain. “I could at least help tidy up after the fact, save the kitchen staff the time tomorrow.”</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">“You really are a prince,” Sylvain remarks, and the sincerity in his voice shocks himself. Dimitri turns a little pink in the cheeks. “Does what help?”</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">“You know,” he murmurs, looking down at his own feet, “intimacy. Does it… does it quiet your mind?”</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">Sylvain’s heart wrenches inside him, looking down at the shadow of his old friend before him, but his face stays steady, mask unmoved. “What could an idiot like me possibly have to shush in there?”</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">“Sylvain.” It jerks out of Dimitri’s mouth like a scolding as his head snaps up, blue eyes meeting brown with intensity, like chips of ice, like the undertow of a lake. “Enough. I cannot stomach you saying such things.”</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">He shrugs. “It’s what everyone is thinking.” He cuts Dimitri off before he can protest, rooting back to the quiet misery in the prince’s voice earlier, not breaking eye contact. “Are you looking to get away from something?”</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">“I…” Dimitri’s mouth falls open a little, flustered in the torchlight, and Sylvain mentally cancels his plans with his own pleasure. “I was merely wondering what it is you’re chasing.”</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">Sylvain steps closer still, almost all distance erased between them. “I wouldn’t say it’s silence I’m looking for,” he says. Dimitri is not as tall as he is, not yet, but he’s tall — too tall, taller than Felix, and Sylvain shakes himself internally at the unexpected comparison. Felix has nothing to do with this. “More like a distraction.”</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">Or, maybe he does have something to do with it after all.</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">Dimitri’s blush, faded, deepens suddenly. Sylvain feels something hot curling inside him, a pleasant surprise. He’s never thought about it before, Dimitri too slotted into the keyhole of childhood friendship in his mind, but the idea of the crown prince of Faerghus taken apart in his hands is not without appeal. “I’ve never… I don’t…”</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">Even more intriguing, another lick of heat thrumming through Sylvain. “It’s all right, your highness,” he murmurs into his ear, feeling the brush of Dimitri against him as he lifts his head at the low honorific, “let me take care of you.” He pulls his head back to meet Dimitri’s eyes again and his pupils are blowing wide and dark, reflecting light back at him, and he nods up at Sylvain.</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">He knows the grin he gives him is wolfish, the kind to send a shiver down the spine of prey, but he takes Dimitri’s hand with an unusual softness to lead them both to his room. The idea of leaving an empty space as barrier between them and Felix seems like a prudent one. The door closes behind them, and Dimitri is stiff and still where he stands, fully separated now since Sylvain had taken both hands to shut and lock their guard against the rest of the monastery. </span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">“How do you want it?” Sylvain asks, nothing more appealing than Dimitri melting under him, losing his formality, the tension in his frame that hadn’t left him since the tragedy.</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">He shakes his head. “I don’t know,” he admits, and the wrench in Sylvain’s heart is back, wringing the muscle until a drip of feeling trickles out. Poor, lonely Dimitri, without comfort, the steadying but formal presence of Dedue only able to go so deep. “I just… want to think about something else. For a while.”</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">If there’s anything Sylvain can do, warm hands and broad chest and intimate lips and clever fingers, it’s empty a mind. He nods at Dimitri, stepping into his space, slowly and carefully as if he’s an actual lion to corner. His hand rises to curve against Dimitri’s neck and his skin is smooth and flushed beneath him, hair meshing with the ends of his fingers where they graze his nape. He thinks about saying something to tease him, open him up a little, maybe ask if he’d danced with anyone as beautiful as him at the ball, but he finds himself strangely silenced as he looks at Dimitri, eyes fluttered closed, mouth parted a little. It’s hard to imagine he’s anything but a normal teenager looking like this, no evidence of his incredible strength or incredible suffering, the duality that only Felix could see.</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">Sylvain sighs as his eyes close, bending to meet Dimitri’s mouth where it’s waiting for him. His lips are surprisingly soft, slick as if he’d just licked them, and maybe he had while Sylvain was closing the door behind them. Dimitri’s mouth is hot against his, and it moves with a certainty that his hands don’t have as they come up, hesitant, to cup against Sylvain’s jaw. He pulls back infinitesimally, eyes searching Dimitri’s for permission as they flash open, and at his wordless assent he leans in again, mouth opened to push farther. Dimitri doesn’t resist, in fact his teeth brush against Sylvain’s lower lip, and he tugs. He doesn’t tug hard, and to Sylvain all that means is that he hasn’t lost himself enough yet, hasn’t let go. Sylvain pulls back, leaving his lip in Dimitri’s grasp to yank harder, and Dimitri unclenches his jaw in a gasp. “Relax, your highness,” Sylvain purrs, and he flinches under him.</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">“Use my name,” Dimitri murmurs, tone commanding in a way that proves deserving of the title, but Sylvain is there to please and so it is <em>Dimitri </em>that he breathes against his neck where his lips press to it, it is Dimitri who gasps over his head and fists his hands in the lapels of Sylvain’s jacket, tugging, pulling back until it drops to the floor. Sylvain’s arms in their shirtsleeves snake around his friend, one at his waist and the other around his shoulders, lips hungry where they clamp down at the juncture of neck and collar, easily covered by Dimitri’s usual uniform where his formalwear exposes it. His teeth graze the skin, tongue pressing hot where the bruise will rise quickly, and Dimitri groans above him through a tight jaw. “Harder, Sylvain.”</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">“I don’t wanna hurt you,” he murmurs against his skin, lips lazy where they brush against him. And he doesn’t.</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">“You won’t,” Dimitri grunts. “I’m stronger than you are, remember?”</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">“Not in here,” Sylvain counters, mouthing his way up Dimitri’s neck — slowly, too slowly, intended to stoke a fire and prove a point. Dimitri makes a sound at that, half groan half gasp, that sends the arm around his waist unwinding, sliding between them to undo the buttons of the prince’s shirt. Dimitri’s sweet inhales fill his mind, Sylvain’s lips and teeth and tongue expressive at the shell of his ear while his fingers do the devil’s work down his chest, exposing more and more skin to the cold air of the night and the warm light of the candles burning on Sylvain’s desk.</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">Loathe as he is to pull away, he does as Dimitri’s shirt comes fully undone, eyes raking over him where he’s made vulnerable, Sylvain’s hands pushing down his arms until he’s half naked in front of him. Dimitri’s body is broad, <em>too broad</em> insists a part of Sylvain’s mind that has grown louder the longer this continues, the harder it is to stop or turn back, but if he’s making a mistake it at least seems to be helping Dimitri. The prince ducks forward under Sylvain’s gaze, pushing their bodies together again, trapping his own hands against the front of Sylvain’s shirt as his mouth hooks into the joint of his jaw. Sylvain tips his head back, moaning with a little encouraging theatricality, and it helps — Dimitri’s fingers fumble with the buttons at his collarbones, and when first one then a few pop off Sylvain knows his goal is in sight. He shrugs out of his shirt underneath Dimitri’s hands, unwilling to part from their grip on the valleys of his ribs.</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">Sylvain pitches his head forward, arching to preserve the rough, hot pressure of Dimitri’s mouth as it sucks down his neck, lips to the prince’s ear again. A particularly harsh graze of teeth on his skin stops his question in its tracks with a gasp as he circles one arm around Dimitri again, the other dropping between them to clutch at his hipbone. Wordlessly he nods against Sylvain’s neck and Sylvain pulls him forward, pressing them together, and Dimitri pulses hard and wanting against his leg and moans. The now-familiar heady hotness roars through Sylvain as Dimitri bumps clumsily at his thigh, looking for friction or stimulation or simply a louder noise to flush his mind, and whatever it is he wants Sylvain will give, and give, and give.</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">He palms over Dimitri’s arousal and his hands jump where they’re pressed to Sylvain’s back, bruising and careless in their force, and a harsh intake of air betrays him. “Is this all right, Dimitri?” he asks, rewarded in return with another nod and a moan at the sound of his name, at the curve of Sylvain’s fingers where they tighten against the front of his pants, squeezing a little before unlacing just enough to snake under his waistband. Sylvain takes him, gentle but firm, strokes him and the prince’s hands are pressing and scared around him. “Tell me how you feel.”</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">“I feel —” He gasps as Sylvain swipes a thumb across him where he’s already damp. “I feel… good,” he finishes, as if he’s surprised to discover it, and Sylvain drops another kiss against his neck at that, heart sinking. Dimitri presses them together, as if he could pass through Sylvain on his way out from the inside of his own head, moaning into Sylvain’s ear as he tightens his grip, fingers and thumb wrapping to meet each other around him. “Sylvain…”</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">“That’s right, I’ve got you,” he murmurs against Dimitri’s skin, and he sighs his name again, <em>Sylvain, Sylvain</em>, and his hand quickens and the prince moans and jerks against him and then he’s finishing, pushing against Sylvain’s hand and staining his shirt. He wipes his hand, quick and subtle, where it’s wet against a dry spot on his shirt and moves his other hand back to Dimitri’s neck, leaning in to kiss him again where he’s seeking and wanting and hungry for contact or for something else Sylvain doesn’t fully understand. This is the time, usually, where Sylvain is looking for a way out, a way away to lie by himself in bed until morning, unburdened by what his loneliness had sought the night before, but instead his lips seek Dimitri’s, pressing hard against him as he tucks him, spent, back in beneath his waistband.</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">“Was that all right?” Sylvain murmurs against Dimitri’s mouth, tongue snaking out as anyone from Faerghus would expect from the last remaining son of Gautier, and it hurts where his muscle meets Dimitri’s though they seek the same thing. The hand that had silenced the voices in the prince’s head crawls up, serpentine, to join the other where it clutches at his neck. Dimitri’s body at all points of intersection rises to meet Sylvain’s for a moment, clutching at him, and then it falls away.</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">“I… this can never happen again,” Dimitri murmurs, where their lips no longer meet, his breath rising against Sylvain’s understanding mouth. In fact, usually at this point or a little farther, Sylvain usually has to send the person he’s with away so he knows this part well. It stings a little but Dimitri’s blown-out pupils and lidded eyes, quiet and without pain, soothe where they meet him.</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">“You know me so well, your majesty,” Sylvain says, and he steps back, putting some distance between them. “Think of this, if it helps.”</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">Dimitri nods. He takes Sylvain’s hand, uncaring of the lingering stickiness or the heat under Sylvain’s fingers where his own arousal still pounds, unquenched, in his blood. “It was good. You are good.” He pauses, then says it again. “You are good, Sylvain.”</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">And then, like he’d predicted earlier, Sylvain Gautier is left alone with his bed and his own hand, still tacky with the future of Faerghus.</span>
</p>
<hr/>
<p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Sylvain is Felix’s first real kiss just months later, he’s still twenty and Felix is eighteen, and should Sylvain admit the fact that he has imagined it he would realize it’s almost exactly as he has imagined it. Kissing Felix.</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">For one thing, they’re in the training grounds. Any time Sylvain thinks of Felix, innocent or sinful, secret, it must begin in the training grounds — for where else would he be? He calls Sylvain insatiable but the track of Felix’s mind is truly unwavering. As usual, Sylvain is there to bother him, to distract him, something. Felix has been acting off lately, maybe not enough to bleed into his interactions with anyone else but Sylvain somehow can feel something different in the air between them, something not right. Even now, swinging his sword at the dummy as Sylvain leans against the wall and chatters idly about the girl he’d hit on outside the marketplace earlier in the week, a scene they’ve repeated permutations of dozens of times, Sylvain can sense something like anger from Felix. Not the usual anger, the surface-level exasperation at the interruption and maybe slightly deeper irritation at Sylvain’s continued follies, or whatever about him bothered Felix so much, but something stronger, like smog on the air.</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">Sylvain is in the middle of a completely unremarkable sentence, one he will be unable to recall later, when the unthinkable happens and he knows without question that something is wrong. Something is wrong because Felix finishes cutting another swath through the air, drops his sword, and whirls to face Sylvain, and since they’ve been here less than an hour Felix can’t possibly be through to the end of his set. The strangeness of it, the shock, stops Sylvain’s words in their tracks.</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">“So you’re back to women now, hmm?” Felix asks. His voice is heavy with his breath, skin sweat-slick and aglow in the torchlight, hair still mostly in its bun and at the sight and the fact of him Sylvain’s chest pangs with something he hasn’t quite managed to choke out after all this time.</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">“Well, yeah, Felix. I haven’t really taken a break,” he replies, chuckling a little.</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">“You did.” His voice is stubborn and his eyes are glaring, just up and to the left of Sylvain’s shoulder, and Sylvain doesn’t have a chance to ask what he means before Felix is explaining, teeth clenched and they might as well be clamping around Sylvain’s throat with how his breath catches in it at the sound. “You diverted with the boar.”</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">So the barrier of Dimitri’s empty room hadn’t been enough to keep their secret from escaping, or maybe — and this too hurts to think about, blow after blow after blow as though Sylvain’s heart is the training dummy beneath Felix’s wooden sword — maybe Felix had been planning to stop by Sylvain’s room, to talk or to chide him for his behavior at the ball or to otherwise act on whatever cryptic reasons Felix had for maintaining his side of their friendship. “Oh,” he says, and for a minute it’s all he can say. Felix looks angry, which is par for the course, but he also looks upset and that part doesn’t make sense just yet. “Sorry, Felix, I don’t usually mess around with people I… know. His Highness was just…” And even though Sylvain, silver-tongued, could easily make a meal of his justification, it’s not his place to say so he clamps down and holds himself silent.</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">But Felix fills in. “I know,” he says. And then something else strange happens — he blushes, not the flush of exertion but the heat of something else coloring his skin under the sheen still burnished over him. The pieces, unbelievable as they are, refuse to fall into place in Sylvain’s mind, where under the constant brainless churn of keeping his face schooled and his body in line something else is working overtime. “He wanted you.”</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">The laugh that escapes Sylvain at that is dry as Sreng. “You definitely have the wrong idea,” he says. “Nobody who already has a Crest wants me.”</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">Felix glares again, really glares at him, not over his shoulder but into his eyes for a moment and it cuts like a sword through Sylvain’s bullshit, the way he always does. “The boar did, for one.”</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">“No, really, it was… he just needed something. That’s all.”</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">“And you noticed that all on your own, did you?” His voice pierces deeper into the hole cut by his eyes, and Sylvain’s brow furrows. “You saw someone in front of you who needed something, and you acted?”</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">“What are you getting at?” he asks. Felix is usually picking a fight with him for some reason or another, so the antagonism in his voice is familiar, but again the echo of something else rings in his tone and his face. And, mercilessly, Felix doesn’t respond, just stares back at the ground, blush spreading again mysteriously to paint his face and what of his neck Sylvain can see before it disappears under his collar. And then the fog clears, revealing an impossible solution, but Sylvain has never been stupid except on the surface and any other outcome is even less possible. “Felix, do you need something?” The flush deepens, and Sylvain bumps off the wall where he had been leaning to step closer, not close enough to send the sudden fear inside him spiking to his scalp but close enough that it’s a low buzz at his diaphragm. His voice when he speaks again is lower because it doesn’t need to travel as far, because it has to say more. “Do you want something?”</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">Felix makes a noise in his throat, like an angry <em>tsk</em> has crawled in there to die, and winds a hand behind his ear to tuck away a stray twist of hair. When that hand falls to rest at the joining of his neck and shoulder, Sylvain finds it in his heart to be gracious to Felix, to read him and to dip at last into a well he’s long wanted to drain dry. He moves in closer again, into Felix’s space, and Felix doesn’t rock back or step away although he must see Sylvain’s feet, his hands as they reach up to cup along Felix’s jaw where his skin is hot and damp but Sylvain doesn’t mind, not at all. He leans in, applying the gentlest pressure to Felix’s face so it’s pointing towards his own.</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">“Is this what you want?” Sylvain asks, voice breathless in a way that might be embarrassing if he didn’t feel so earnest, and he’s so close now that he can feel where the exhale meets Felix’s.</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">Felix has always been better with actions than words, so when he says nothing and instead rises onto the balls of his feet to press their lips together Sylvain is not surprised, not by that. What does surprise him is the overwhelming feeling that spreads through him, hot like fire and soft like silk, like the world is changing around them. His hands at Felix’s jaw are trembling but their lips are still against each other because, maybe, Felix hasn’t done this since that first time when they were children, and, maybe, Sylvain is paralyzed by something overpowering slotting into place inside him. He pulls back then, not far but far enough to catch his breath against Felix’s lips. Felix’s eyes flash open, too close to look anywhere but right at Sylvain, and his pupils are dilated but his brows are knitted in… suspicion? Wariness? Sylvain is panting, embarrassingly but he can’t bring himself to feel anything else in the face of whatever this is, whatever finally having this has awakened in him.</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">Sylvain is generous in and out of bed, giving equally on the battlefield and in his or someone else’s quarters, always looking to jump in and help someone at the risk of his own life or safety or status. But when he leans back in to press his mouth to Felix’s again he wants to take him, to <em>have</em> him, and Felix surges forward again to align their bodies, fisting his hands in Sylvain’s shirt at his shoulders, letting their teeth clack awkwardly and satisfying against each other when he hungrily parts his lips against Sylvain’s. And as Sylvain presses his tongue against Felix’s, lazily worming fully into the heat of his mouth, hands twisting into his hair where it’s still smoggy from his abbreviated training, it seems he’ll get his wish.</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">Felix falls back, feet flat again, pulling Sylvain down to meet him and he’s taller than most of the girls Sylvain has been with but still small enough to send a strange feeling of looming through him, the urge to overwhelm Felix, cover him and fill him, to be the rise and set of his intimacy. It’s not a soft feeling but it’s undercut increasingly by tenderness as Felix moans, vulnerable, into Sylvain’s mouth, as his arms lock around Sylvain’s neck and he puts his weight on him, clamping them together with force inexorable, irresistible, as Sylvain’s own hands drop to circle Felix’s waist to collapse them against each other.</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">He feels more vulnerability, a part of Felix Sylvain has dreamed of time and time again in a section of his mind too impossible, too inaccessible, to be conscious of, stirring against his thigh where he has it nudged between Felix’s knees, where he has let Sylvain in the way they always do to each other, and at that Sylvain pulls away, drops one last kiss to his forehead, heated but measured, a tug at the reins. “Not here,” he murmurs, lips against Felix’s skin where, with realization that shocks him warm throughout, Felix is pressing his head upwards, seeking him, chasing him where they’re separated. Sylvain smiles at that before putting full space between their faces — but by the goddess he’s not letting go of Felix’s body now that he has it in his grasp. It’s like things are falling into place, like something is unwinding in front of him, inside him, something he hadn’t even known was coiled and tangled up until in all its glory it unfurled. Like looking at Felix like this, holding him, connecting with him, is where he was meant to be all along, like something they’ve both been walking calmly and peacefully towards, whatever havoc went on around them.</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">“What’s wrong with here?” Felix asks, and his voice is a little breathy under his usual sharpness. To emphasize his point, he pushes harder against Sylvain’s leg, tightens his arms around his neck, and Sylvain bites his lip and turns his eyes skyward, praying for the patience of whatever saint had had praises sung for their forbearance into one of Sylvain’s heedless childhood ears and out the other. “What’s wrong with now?”</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">“Who said anything about now?” Sylvain murmurs, putting his lips to Felix’s ear to let his breath and his words brush over the skin turning pink there. “My main concerns are things like the wide-open doors behind us, and the other students that use these training grounds all the time, and —”</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">“Enough blathering, you’ve made your point,” Felix says, tight, and he makes to wriggle out of Sylvain’s arms. He doesn’t get far, Sylvain lets him out a little before circling fingers around his wrist like a cuff. “My room then?” Sylvain likes this, their dynamic reversed, happy to go along with Felix the way he always somehow is to go with Sylvain, whatever they can do to get Ingrid’s ire up. The world, Fodlan, might be shifting around them but some things stay the same. Some things have to. Sylvain nods and Felix tugs the arm where his hand is wrapped. “Let go then.” Sylvain shakes his head, grinning, and tightens his grip momentarily for show.</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">“I’ve got you now, Felix,” he says. “I’m gonna give you what you need, what you want.”</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">“And if I wanted you to let go?” he asks, looking away, pink washing over his cheekbones high under his eyes, and Sylvain catches the under-meaning.</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">“Anything but that.” They go, energy pulsing between them like lightning, miraculously passing neither students they know nor bedfellows of Sylvain’s past, as if the goddess herself had put up walls around their path, the path to Felix’s door where it’s closed to everyone but them, always, forever. Dimitri’s door is ajar on the far side, Claude’s on the near side tightly closed, but that’s a problem more easily dealt with in the morning.</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">Once they’re shut in, there’s a moment where both of them pause, like they’re sizing each other up for an imminent spar. Who will move first, where will the maiden blow land, who will be faster, who will come out on top.</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">“So, Felix,” Sylvain says, slowly, reaching up to the neck of his own shirt to begin undoing the buttons there, and he’s gratified when Felix’s eyes immediately drop to his collarbone, lips parting almost unconsciously to let his tongue ghost across the torn-open seam there, “what do you want?”</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">“Shut up and get a move on,” Felix replies, which is as good as an answer and shoots blood to pool low against Sylvain’s thighs. Before Sylvain can speed up enough to undo all his buttons, Felix has his own shirt off, looser and less complex than his uniform to better facilitate sword movement, and if Sylvain was planning to move quickly before, the rush and purpose leaves his mind at the sight of Felix, half-naked before him. It’s nothing he hasn’t seen before, true, but context is everything and Felix’s skin glows dimly in the moon and candlelight, the flame and gentler shine from the window glinting off scars where they dot his chest and arms, places healers of the past couldn’t quite reach. He’s arresting, more so even than usual now that he’s like this for Sylvain instead of the myriad other practical reasons they’ve been laid bare to each other before. Sylvain’s breath catches in his throat, and Felix, so eager a moment ago, tosses his shirt to the side and and flushes, looking at the floor.</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">“What?” The word bites from his mouth, a shield over some vulnerability under Sylvain’s gaze, and Sylvain shakes his head, fingers finally galvanizing to finish undoing his buttons.</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">“You’re beautiful,” he says, because what else can he say, but Felix flinches at it and he can’t help but feel he’s already misstepped as he shrugs out of his jacket, leaving his shirt hanging on and open for the moment.</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">“Enough. We’re doing this, you don’t have to seduce me,” Felix says, folding his arms, and Sylvain’s heart wrings at the same time that his mind drives him to unwind those arms again, to expose Felix, to take him apart and see every part of him. He settles for stepping closer.</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">“Do you want me to seduce you?” he asks, reaching out to tuck a loose strand of hair behind Felix’s ear, letting his fingers linger against the shell there, against his neck where the ends fall, and Felix’s skin heats up under his touch. “I want to. I want you, Felix, I want to tell you all the things I’ve thought about you, want to touch you, make you feel good.”</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">Felix’s pulse is hammering under his thumb where it still presses into his neck, and his arms still crossed over his lungs make it all the more obvious that he’s breathing fast. “Did you say all this inane shit to the boar, too?” he asks.</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">Sylvain knows there’s something between Felix and Dimitri, some gigantic mess of tangled barbed wire and bleeding heart. He knows about the rebellion, about the childhood behind it, the friendship and the star-crossed destiny of their families. He knows too that Felix is his own person, doesn’t want to be compared to anyone else or thought of in tandem with anyone else. And more than anything Sylvain knows Felix, knows what he wants to hear — the truth. He rolls his eyes, bringing his other hand up to tug at one of Felix’s wrists. “No, Felix,” he says. “I was just doing his highness a favor.” He pulls the wrist he has to slide Felix’s hand under the collar of one side of his open shirt, assurance rising when it doesn’t move from where the palm presses against his skin. Sylvain takes his other wrist, still crossed stubbornly alone across his chest, and tugs again. “He could have been anyone. But you?” He places Felix’s hand in the same position on the other shoulder and again is rewarded with stillness. He leans in, closer now that there’s less of a barrier between them, and Felix’s eyes flick up to meet his. “I want you, Felix. I want this.”</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">“Then take it,” Felix says, so low Sylvain is almost convinced he didn’t hear it, but then he finally pushes his hands over Sylvain’s shoulders to send his shirt sliding to the floor, uses the momentum to press forward and again Sylvain is stunned that Felix makes the first move to kiss him. And kiss him he does, thoroughly and surprisingly well, or maybe it’s just that it’s Felix that makes Sylvain groan into his mouth where his teeth press against his bottom lip, tugging a little too hard the way Felix’s hands too pull a little too strongly at his shoulders. Sylvain’s fingers grab at Felix’s hair too where they’re tangled, but they’re gentle, because he knows how Felix responds to strength, to ferocity, to pain and heartache and death but Sylvain is far too estranged from how Felix handles softness, something he hasn’t seen at all since Glenn died and less frequently since they were fully children.</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">It turns out that to an extent Felix is the same as he was when they were small, because like he would back then he reciprocates Sylvain’s tenderness by pulling closer, locking their bodies against each other, wrapping his arms fully and firm around Sylvain’s neck. Sylvain’s hands slide over him, starting at his neck where they hang in his hair, over his shoulders and down his arms, then returning up from his hips to his ribs to his back, all as their mouths move against each other, peaceful and strangely without urgency, trading sighs and the kind of noises that Sylvain should be deaf to from sheer overexposure but instead ring in his head when they fall from Felix’s lips to curl in his throat and slide into his stomach, weighty and hot. It’s with his arms curved around Felix’s ribs to let his fingers tangle between his shoulder blades that Sylvain breaks their tether, only for a moment, to dip his head to Felix’s jaw, where his lips curve hungrily at the hinge of his joint, and Felix’s head tips to give him purchase and his teeth clench hard enough for Sylvain to hear it hiding beneath the gasp that tears from between them, hands scrabbling at the skin of Sylvain’s back.</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">“Sylvain,” he hisses, half gasp, back arching as if they could be any closer together. The corners of Sylvain’s mouth turn up, just a little, as he makes his way down the column of his neck, splaying his fingers against Felix’s skin, taking as much of him in as he can, like he’ll never have this again. And maybe he won’t, but the sound and feeling of Felix trying and failing to gulp back the moans escaping his throat, like he’s drowning, like he’s dying, are committed to Sylvain’s memory, a song stuck in his head.</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">Then Felix makes another first move. Sylvain knows how to make his partners feel confident, sure, but he had expected this to be like most of his hookups with (he has to assume) a first-timer — he takes the lead, gentle hands and soft words and lots of guidance. But no, Felix reaches between them, fingers seeking the laces at Sylvain’s waistband with his usual precision, and Sylvain feels himself stir as Felix’s task brings him brushing over his growing arousal. Felix hums a little, and Sylvain worries the skin at a tendon stretching above his collarbone in answer. “Insatiable,” Felix says, and again his fingers glance over him with what has to be intention, sending more hot blood pounding through Sylvain’s body. “Even after all your other conquests you’re still like this for me. We’ve barely even started.”</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">“Goddess, let’s hope so,” Sylvain says, looking up in awe at Felix from the spot where his lips are in his shoulder. “I’m nowhere near finished with you.”</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">Felix flushes at that, and he’ll never meet Sylvain’s eyes no matter how much he wishes he would, but his fingers are sure as he tugs at Sylvain’s waistband with both hands, dropping them with his underwear to his ankles where he steps out easily, gasping against Felix’s skin as his hand closes firmly around him where he’s hard and aching now. Felix pulls his head back, sending Sylvain chasing him with his lips, but he doesn’t relent, instead winding one hand in Sylvain’s hair and tugging him back, hard, bending his own head tantalizingly close to Sylvain’s to murmur in his ear, “You’ll get what I give you.” And between the dizzying feeling that sends spiking through Sylvain and the firm tug Felix gives with each hand, like he intends to take him apart, Sylvain goes weak in the knees.</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">Felix feels it, walking Sylvain backwards with a hand on each of the important parts of him until the back of his legs hit Felix’s bed and they tumble backwards, Felix climbing on top of him with his usual dexterity and stroking more quickly as he renews his grip around Sylvain. The moan that escapes Sylvain’s lips is loud and shameless, his hands scrambling to touch Felix, to rub up and down his chest and stomach, his unfairly still-clothed legs, the barrier over his own arousal, but any time Sylvain gets close Felix squirms away, the press of his ass against Sylvain’s thighs doing even more cruel things to him. “Felix,” he says, gasping between each word, with each strong swipe of Felix’s thumb against him, the firm torque of his grip on him, “let me touch you.”</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">“Not yet,” he replies, and Sylvain thinks with a second of clarity that there’s something other than the cocky confidence he’s shown so far in his voice, but then Felix is bending down to lick at the skin low on his stomach and all thought of anything else leaves Sylvain’s head. Felix’s mouth is hot around him as he takes him in, slick enough to provide the lubrication Sylvain had started to miss for the hand still stroking where his tongue can’t reach, and inexperienced as it seems he is Sylvain still feels with embarrassing quickness that he’s sure to shake apart. Felix’s free hand is clenched against the meat of Sylvain’s thigh, each twitch of his body sending his blunted nails deeper into Sylvain’s skin and into his soul, his legs are bent up underneath him where he’s perched like a bird of prey between Sylvain’s knees, and Felix’s eyes — well, his eyes are up toward Sylvain’s face, maybe a spot to the left of his chin, but the look there is curious, hungry, and Sylvain feels one more shot of heat pierce him from his hands where they’re clutched, aimless and weak, in the sheets above his head to his toes where they’re curling in the rising tide of a chance at actual pleasure.</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">“Felix,” he groans, and though he says it with thought this time he realizes he’s been saying it over and over, a mantra, for who knows how long in time with the movements of his impossibly hot mouth. “Felix, I’m close, let me—”</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">Felix Fraldarius is one of Sylvain’s oldest friends, and he knows him inside and out, now more literally than ever. And surely it must be the whitening at the edges of his mind, the static crawling over his brain at the picture bobbing between his thighs, that makes Sylvain fall into such a trap of his own volition. Because Felix never gives up, and he never loses, and somehow this is a contest and a game they’re playing all at once and now he knows he’s winning. Felix’s lips stretch around him in a smirk, and then with one final, deliberate twist of his hand to let go, to plant his palm on Sylvain’s stomach with resolution, he slides brave and wet and tight down to the base of Sylvain, to the root, and though his lips hit Sylvain’s skin and hold throughout the cresting wave of his orgasm, Sylvain swears he can feel them inside him, warm and pressed at his deepest point.</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">Felix pulls back immediately after, not one to waste time, and luckily Sylvain is too preoccupied with ensuring he comes down quickly from his high, to get his turn, to be hurt when Felix spits out the open window, careless of who might be below it, wiping his chin on the back of his hand. By the time he turns back to Sylvain, he’s sitting up in Felix’s bed, pulling on his pants, and he watches with some glee as Felix’s brows knit. “Leaving already?”</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">Sylvain grins at him. “Without even touching you, when you look like that?” <em>That</em>, face and chest flushed, hair falling out of its tie to frame Felix’s face, eyes glassy from strain and pupils blown and most of all hard, hard to sweet pain under his clothes still, and Sylvain would rather die than leave Felix untouched. “No, I just have something in my room I need to get.” He lets his grin turn dark, his gaze hot, and Felix gets a measuring and wary look in his eye that’s usually reserved for foes. “I’m going to take you apart.”</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">He lingers longer in his room than he needs to, the bottle is exactly where he knew it would be, but he knows something about the power of anticipation, of fear. Then he thinks of Felix’s impatience, of how it might clash with and overcome the gritted wanting Sylvain had seen in him, and he walks faster on the way back to his room. Dimitri’s door is closed now.</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">And Felix is where he left him, head twisting up as Sylvain opens and shuts the door behind him, sitting on the bed with his arms and legs crossed and his shirt off and his hair mussed like he’s nervously waiting for a hugely unprofessional job interview. Just the sight of him casts Sylvain back into the ocean of intensity rolling inside him, doing this with Felix, being with him, some of the things he hasn’t been brave enough yet to think about — that Felix thought Sylvain’s pleasure was worth chasing first, that he trusted him enough to count on him following through. Sylvain had always thought love would be a river of pain flowing over him, something to drown in and never have returned, and maybe Felix didn’t or couldn’t love him the way he wanted but maybe that one choice could be enough.</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">Now he’s looking at Sylvain, eyes a little guarded and adrenaline a little faded, but Sylvain can work with him, wants to stoke Felix back up and then tear him down until he’s boneless and a heartbeat on his back in his bed. Sylvain leaves his pants on, instead moving to sit next to Felix on the mattress, dropping the bottle innocuous but portentous on his bedside table.</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">The kiss that he gives him first is languorous and long, an <em>isn’t it nice that we’re doing this</em> kiss, bragging, gloating. He touches Felix’s throat, hardly able to stop himself from clutching at it when he realizes his hand would wrap almost fully around it, easily, instead spreading his fingers to press gently at his pulse, at the tense muscle, at the edge of his spine. Felix turns hungry quickly, grabbing at Sylvain’s hair, the only place he can find purchase without his shirt to tug on, licking into Sylvain’s mouth, catlike. Sylvain, unable as ever to deny Felix, winds his other arm around his waist, tugging at the curve of his hip until Felix is planted in his lap, sending hot notes of some deep fondness through Sylvain with each attempt to squirm closer to him. As Sylvain tears away to catch his breath and mouth down Felix’s neck, each touch pulls a gasp or a moan or a noise entirely new from him, and so far this is the thing that surprises him the most — that Felix could be so expressive, so open about what he wants.</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">That said, the hard press of Felix against Sylvain’s thigh is just as telling as the sounds he makes. Sylvain has kept him waiting long enough, years maybe of orbiting each other only to fall at last into the gravity well, but he’ll keep him a little longer.</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">Felix touches Sylvain in every way, scraping his blunted nails across his chest, stroking the tips of his fingers over his earlobes, hooking his thumbs over the joining of neck and shoulder, and Sylvain is strong but not strong enough to keep him from it, not strong enough to feel each touch as anything but hot and deep inside him, reaching him. And Sylvain responds in kind, holding Felix, touching him, tender and smooth against the hot skin of his back and ribs, his arms and face, the still-clothed length of his thighs, dipping below his waistband just enough to make Felix roll his hips against Sylvain’s stomach, irresistible, experimental, and he groans into Sylvain’s mouth where they’re joined again and the groan is Sylvain’s name and a reproach and a plea all at once.</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">“Just a little longer,” he murmurs against Felix’s lips, then moves to the corner of his mouth, then to his jaw where he tongues a long line of open-mouthed heat that has Felix gasping again like he’s being shocked, then to his neck and collarbones where red marks will turn to bruises when they’re done.</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">When Sylvain reaches his chest with his mouth he moves him, missing his weight in his lap as he lays Felix out under him on his bed, maybe a bed where he’s dreamed of doing this with Sylvain before, maybe a bed where it was Felix’s hand, not Sylvain’s as it is now, drifting down his stomach, ghosting over himself hard and damp already in his pants, and when Sylvain does that Felix’s hips buck up against his palm, chasing even the tiniest bit of stimulation. Sylvain grins up at him from where he’s laving his belly button, and what a sight Felix makes, flushing and panting and already a mess under Sylvain’s experienced fingers and teeth and tongue.</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">“Felix,” he purrs, and the name falls from his mouth like and unlike it has a thousand times before, like a drop of honey, like a term of endearment, like a poison Sylvain could happily succumb to, “you were so good for me. What do you want in return?”</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">And Felix is a reserved person, but Sylvain has never known him to be speechless when he wants to speak. But now, with Sylvain looking up at him like he’s a piece of meat, like he’s going to consume him, Felix’s parted lips mouth around nothing. </span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">“Tell me,” Sylvain murmurs, reaching behind him for the bottle on the nightstand, dropping it on the bed, careless in his haste to get both hands back on Felix’s body, to speak against his skin, “do you want me to be gentle? Do you want me to be sweet to you?” He’s half pressed against Felix, half hovering over him, lips to the shell of his ear now while his fingers stroke over his neck to crawl into his hair and tug a little. “Do you want me to use my mouth? My hands?” And to demonstrate he flicks one earlobe with his tongue, takes one nipple and rolls it between his fingers, and Felix’s hot breath fills the air under him, half humping Sylvain’s thigh where he’s pressed against it like a wild animal, like a dog in heat.</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">“Sylvain,” he says again, and his voice is loud as a roar, or maybe it’s just the only sound Sylvain will let himself hear, “stop talking and just do <em>something</em>.”</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">He laughs at that, open and right in Felix’s ear, and he makes short work of his pants, tugging them off and following with his own all over again, parting from the warm press of Felix’s body to toss both to the floor and to take another look at him. Felix has an arm pressed over his eyes, an upper bound to focus Sylvain’s attention on his gapped mouth, formless and wanting and red-bitten.</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">Sylvain slicks his hand easily with the oil, settling back between Felix’s legs, bent at the knee with his feet pressed against the mattress. Even this far along he’s fighting the vulnerability that comes with the territory, joints clamped together like a vise, like a wall to keep him out even though Sylvain can infer from the dripping against Felix’s stomach that he wants nothing more than to let him in. He slides his ungreased hand between Felix’s knees, nudging them apart, and centimeter by centimeter separates them, sliding further and further up the bed until his knees are planted near where Sylvain imagines he’ll be propping up the back of Felix’s thighs soon, and the image of that alone floods him with so much heat that he can feel himself stirring weakly but warmly again. But he’s had his turn.</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">Sylvain licks the palm without oil, lasciviously, a show to hopefully make Felix less nervous or whatever it is that he’s feeling where his eyes peer out from under his arm, and Felix glares for a second but gasps as Sylvain gets his fist around him, easily, and strokes. Sylvain’s done this enough to have an idea of what feels good no matter what preference, and if Felix has never done this before then the bar couldn’t be lower. Based on the moans tearing from Felix’s throat, hot and wet at the head of the bed, he’s right. </span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">“You want me to go further?” Sylvain asks, rubbing two glistening fingers together, hoping Felix isn’t so Faerghus-virginal to not take the hint, but he doesn’t even look at Sylvain from under his forearm, nodding with his mouth open, panting. “After you were so generous…” And he bites off an endearment that Felix would surely hear as false, instead speaking the language of action that Felix understands so fluently, petting him where he’s vulnerable and swiping a thumb across the tip of where he’s hard and hot in his hand. He’s rewarded with the reality of his vision from a moment ago, Felix’s thighs falling back naturally to near Sylvain’s shoulders with a groan that spirals into a spine-tingling whine as Sylvain pushes inside him, slow and sweet. </span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">Felix is tight, so tight, even with the lubrication, and he’s still under Sylvain for a moment, just heavy breathing and adjustment to the newness of this. Then Sylvain moves, both hands in practiced synchronization, designed to pull Felix apart in the sweetest way possible. Felix is arching his back, pressing himself closer to Sylvain with every pump and every beckoning finger and every hot breath and wet moan. His hands are gripped in the sheets above his head, wildly twisting them as if that would make a difference, as if Sylvain won’t just press his finger into the spot that makes Felix howl like a wolf, adjust his grip to pull a whine from him more precious than gold. Looking up the bed, a space previously impossible to traverse, Sylvain can’t stop the words pouring from him to mingle with Felix’s gasping and groaning, <em>you feel so good with me like this</em>, <em>you look amazing</em>, <em>fuck, Felix, fuck</em>.</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">When Felix’s throat closes around the sound coming from it, Sylvain lets go of him with one hand, slowly pushing another finger of the other inside him, still so hot and so tight but with just enough room to accommodate him, and a reckless groan tears from him as Sylvain bends down to fill the need left by his hand. He barely has his mouth around Felix when he finishes, Sylvain’s fingers curling inside him and his tongue pressing up against the vein he can feel along the underside, Felix’s whole body tightening in the wake.</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1"> The come-down should be easy, something Sylvain has seen and experienced each a hundred times before. Instead, when he pulls back, wiping the back of the less-disgusting hand across his chin while he ruins his previously-discarded shirt with the other one, he finds himself uncertain, looking at Felix for appraisal and approval between the shaky and deep breaths he’s taking in the aftermath. “So?” Sylvain asks, willing his voice not to give him away, whatever there is to give.</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">Felix glares at him, effect lessened a little by the fact that he’s still flushed out and panting. “So what?”</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">“So,” Sylvain begins, but his deep-buried retraction kicks in and he changes course, “did you get what you wanted?”</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">Felix props himself up on his elbows and fixes Sylvain with a look that confuses him, maybe scares him a little, a look that says more than Sylvain could possibly understand all at once. “For now,” he says, and Sylvain forces a grin across his face before leaving for his own room.</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">A few days later, when Sylvain knocks at Felix’s door under the slim pretense of picking up his forgotten bottle of oil (<em>why do you need it now, someone waiting for you? not yet, but the night is still young, huh?</em>), Felix tugs him inside and they do it all over again.</span>
</p>
<hr/>
<p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Sylvain is Felix’s last kiss, and Felix is his, in their twenties, before Arianrhod. The specifics don’t matter that close to the end.</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">As it turned out, Ingrid had been the one to defect to the Empire, just before everything had turned upside down when Edelgard declared herself the emperor. When it had just been choosing a different class to be in, there hadn’t been much fallout, just <em>hmmphs</em> from Felix and waggling eyebrows from Sylvain any time Dorothea was around and pleading from Dimitri on advice to improve the experience of being in the Blue Lions’ classroom. But after everything in the Holy Tomb, after Ingrid had left the entire monastery behind, after the weight of everyone’s decisions was settling in, Sylvain had gone to the camp where the Black Eagles class was waiting and planning their next move. He was let in without much incident or fanfare, clearly barely a threat. He shuddered to think what the reception might have been if he’d brought Felix or, goddess forbid, Dimitri with him.</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">Looking back on the long, bleak journey to the Tailtean Plains, it’s easy to remember. Ingrid is hunkered down in a corner of the campsite, just in reach of the glow of a fire where some students he doesn’t recognize are huddled. Ingrid looks at him and her eyes light up, more than just a reaction to seeing an old friend, and it clicks immediately — she’s misunderstood the reason he’s here. Ingrid is smart though, perceptive, and even as she’s scrambling to his feet she realizes her miscalculation, sees something in Sylvain’s face that spills the truth. Her path to embracing him stops in its tracks and Sylvain doesn’t move to continue it.</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">“Hey,” he says, hand going by default to the back of his neck even though out of the two of them he’s closer to intending a scolding at the moment.</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">“Why are you here, Sylvain?” Her voice is tired, her arms crossing over her chest. The look in her eye reminds him of hungry younger days in Galatea territory, and Sylvain wonders for a moment whether she’s eaten anything today, since the Black Eagles left the monastery in a whirlwind of fury and blood. That professor Felix had admired so much had been with them.</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">All the energy he usually pours into smooth talk and flattery instead has to go into keeping himself standing in the face of someone he thought would never leave his side, Dimitri’s or Felix’s side. “I just wanted to know why.”</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">“You, of all people, should know why,” Ingrid replies, almost angry in the firelight. “Sylvain, the emperor wants to destroy the system that’s made me a prisoner to my father’s ridiculous marriage schemes for years, the reason your Crest controls your whole life. The structure that’s meant my whole existence will boil down to marrying some man I can’t love and bearing children I have to pray will be strong enough to survive.” Her voice softens. “Don’t you understand? Don’t you want that?”</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">He hadn’t come to convince her to leave, but either way it’s obvious that Ingrid is staying. Felix is staying with Dimitri, and therefore Sylvain is staying with Dimitri. He does hug her before he leaves, long and tight, and she grips onto him like she’ll never see him again.</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">It turns out they do see each other, one more time.</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">Edelgard’s sweeping conquest tightens the Faerghus nobility, battening down the hatches against incoming Imperial forces. Sylvain finds himself in what’s left of Fraldarius territory more often than usual, as Felix finds himself in Gautier, falling in and out of each other’s beds and slowly growing like the roots of a tree twisted and strong around their childhood promise — something to hold onto when the light is dimming on a battlefield somewhere, waiting for the warmth of healing magic to pull them back from the depths.</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">It’s the former the night before they leave for Arianrhod, Sylvain in a house and in a bed for once instead of under the canvas shield of a tent. Felix lies next to him, too tired for much beyond the <em>hey, how are you, we're alive for now</em> intimacy of earlier in the evening. Sylvain can tell because he’s letting him hold his hand without protest, even humming a little when Sylvain’s thumb rubs over his knuckle.</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">“Are you nervous?” he asks, stupidly, whatever he actually wants to say caught in his throat.</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">“To fight the ruler of an entire continent and the most competent military force in Fodlan?” Felix replies dryly. “With my father, no less? Not nervous at all. Let the emperor herself come to my blade.”</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">Sylvain can’t bring himself to chuckle. Instead he rolls onto his side and gives Felix a kiss that, if they have to have a last one, he wishes had been it. It’s slow and sweet, building the kind of heat that wouldn’t be sustainable — so he tells himself on the road to the Plains, trying not to think too deeply about the sweep of Felix’s eyelashes against his cheek, how his hair flowed so sweetly over his fingers where Sylvain had them tangled, how Felix’s hilt-rough hands cupped his face with a tenderness born of exhaustion.</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">“I don’t care who comes to you as long as you come back to me,” Sylvain says, in the only space he can say something like that, the place where their foreheads press together and their bodies are warm and close to each other.</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">“Sylvain…” Felix says after a moment, and his voice is low. “In case I don’t come back, you should know something.”</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">“You’ll come back.” Sylvain says it firmly, enough to keep his voice from shaking, and lightly, as if he could actually believe it. Felix just keeps his eyes shut, mouth tightening, fingers tangling again with Sylvain’s.</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">“Shamir didn’t.” Blunt and irrefutable. Shamir had died at Garreg Mach, a fact that was terrifying enough on its own considering how unquestionable her skill had been. Felix, though less experienced, is a formidable foe too, but remembering Shamir certainly didn’t make Sylvain feel any better. “So that’s what it takes to shut you up,” Felix continues, grip on Sylvain’s hand like a vise in revolt against the barb of his words. “You should know that I… I don’t want you to keep our promise. Even if I go, I want you to stay.” He’s silent for a moment. “Edelgard’s world sounds like one you might want to live in.”</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">It’s an impossible ask. If Sylvain kept living, he would be fighting by Dimitri’s side, which would mean either his death or the death of Edelgard’s dream. The old Sylvain of the academy days, or the Sylvain here and now, warm and safe and as close to happy as he’s ever been with Felix by his side, would have considered the third option of running. But in the scenario they’re working through, with Felix gone, what would there be to run to? To run for?</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">Sylvain’s own life is meaningless without the people in it, and the blow of Ingrid leaving has already pushed him to the edge. He doesn’t speak, instead smoothing Felix’s hair back from his forehead, holding on to his hand, shushing him until he falls asleep.</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">Sylvain isn’t sent to Arianrhod, instead returning to Gautier to try another round of negotiations with Sreng in hopes of bringing in allies. His hopes are getting higher and higher with every conversation they have that doesn’t end in shouting or declarations or war. Not that he’ll be around to see a union between them, he thinks, watching Felix buckle himself into his leather armor and willing it to have the strength of a much more resistant material.</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">The kiss he gives Felix as he leaves is too quick, too casual, lips pressed hard together for a moment like the unspoken, impossible promise of <em>something better when you come back</em>. And when they part, for the last time, their eyes meet and Felix looks scared. Sylvain is sure he does too, but they say nothing. And then Felix is gone. And then a week or so later the news arrives — Felix is dead, he died by his father’s side. Rumors swirl that Ingrid is the one who struck him down, the only one fast enough to dodge his sword, the only one knowledgeable enough about his movements to anticipate him, to land a hit.</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">Though he’d dismissed the idea earlier, when the blow delivers to punch a hole in his chest he thinks about leaving, about joining Edelgard or abandoning everything, faking his own death and starting over somewhere with an empty margraviate and a lonely king behind him. But a world cruel enough, strong enough, to kill Felix isn’t one Sylvain could survive in and he knows it. So instead he responds to Dimitri’s summons to Fhirdiad, to journey to the Tailtean Plains, to make one last stand against the Empire. The Alliance is already lost; the Kingdom is not a land populated by those used to fighting without winning or dying. So they go.</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">When the imperial army arrives, Sylvain sees Ingrid first. It’s not that she’s especially noticeable, one pegasus among many, but his eyes are drawn to her nonetheless. And she sees him too, and the moment their gazes interlock he knows the rumors are true, because she looks sorrowful but she also looks sorry. He grips his lance tighter.</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">But it doesn’t help in the end. It’s not Ingrid he faces last — it’s the professor, the one Felix had talked his ear off about their sword prowess for hours at a time during school. Their eyes look just as empty as Sylvain remembers, corners of their mouth maybe a little more weighed down. They assess him for a moment, battle swirling around their frozen moment in time. Sylvain can’t bring himself to feel much of anything, just that same ache inside like something’s been taken out, just the suicidal perseverance to keep going despite.</span>
</p>
<p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">They don’t say anything as they clash together. Sylvain’s last words, run irreparably through with the sword that had carved a continent’s destiny, are lost in the choke of blood rushing in his throat.</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>doesn’t it feel natural that sylvain would be all the childhood friends’ first kiss? i’m sorry, i HAD to do one vaguely sad one. back to our regularly scheduled cheese and sap for the last day. thank you for reading!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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